Dragon Age: What Remains
by SoulKit
Summary: In times of war, things are done that should never be done. Heroes are killed, friends are lost, and nobody survives to be the man they were before. Now, a year after the last of the Grey Wardens were slaughtered at the battle of Denerim, desperate masters seek to kill what they created and a boy becomes a legend. (Dark fic, warnings inside, M!Amell/Alistair.)
1. The Last Grey Warden

**This fic _will _contain: graphic descriptions of violence, gore, torture, as well as both F/M and M/M sex, brief descriptions of cannibalism, mentions of rape, a fair amount of swearing, and alcohol and substance abuse.**

* * *

Dragon Age: **Edge of Tomorrow  
**Volume One: Children of Destiny  
Chapter 0:  
_\- The Last Grey Warden -_  
By SoulKit

* * *

She was burning.

In these last moments, it wasn't the blood loss or the broken bones or pure exhaustion that finally did it for her. She had experienced all those too many times before to let them be her undoing. No. It was the pure unrelenting _burning._

It was melting her skin, letting her blood pour out, shrinking her muscles and fracturing her bones. She was young and strong, nearly twenty four, but the fire kept coming, each searing blast seemingly hotter than the last. Only the protection of magic was keeping her alive, keeping her screaming and spinning and shuddering and oh Maker it hurt it hurt it _hurt._

She was in full panic now. She didn't even know how her barrier worked, forever wary of a mage's power as almost everyone was, and it was only made worse the past year by (_don't say his name) _narrowing his eyes at the very mention of magic. But she did know that it didn't matter how it functioned because she was already hurt so bad and she was so tired and she just didn't know if she had the strength to go on-

_NO!_

The fire stopped.

The agony remained.

Panting, not quite screaming, she raised her bleeding, cracked head.

The Archdemon stared back.

Eyes burning with hatred and fury, its screaming thoughts pushing against her mind as the taint rose up with an angry snarl. The taint she had willingly accepted into her veins because she had nothing else left to lose. Did she regret it? Did she regret every hard-fought battle, every wound, every cry, every doubt, every fear, every moment she had forced herself to fight through this past year? The agony she had fought against every step of the way to finally arrive here, at the top of Fort Drakon, the highest point in Denerim, the final showdown that would decide the fate of Ferelden. The fate of Thedas. It was all on her. Either way she would give her life.

Did she regret it?

_Never._

Win or lose, it was too late for her.

She was going to die.

And she was going to die alone.

The sudden gaping horror of knowing this did not bring her some stupid, clichéd inner peace. She had always been dreading this moment in a dark, secret corner of her mind that hid the memories and thoughts and ideas she never wanted to form coherently. Only now did she understand how necessary it had always been. It hid the terror she had desperately been hiding for months, too scared to face it and confirm what she had always feared.

She was a coward.

She could feel it: true unrelenting fear that turned her burned veins to ice and caused her thoughts to spin like a maelstrom and her dying breaths to quicken and break unevenly. She could feel all of it.

_Help me._

Nobody could. They were all fighting in the war below, in the tower beneath her very body, defending her, depending on her, believing in her. How could she live up to that? How was she even still alive?

_Magic._

But she made an oath. A sworn oath on the death of her family and everyone she had ever cared about. She wanted to get up. She wanted to fight. She wanted to prove their belief in her was warranted. Not so she could be some hero, a shining beacon of hope to inspire generations to come and have her name known throughout the land.

Because she was just a broken woman not ready to die.

"_FOR FERELDEN!"_

So she forced her dying body to work. She reached for her sword. She tensed her tearing and splintering muscles and bones. She tried one more time.

And failed.

Without warning, the game the dragon seemed to have been playing, the cruel game of keeping her just alive enough to think she might survive, that game seemed to be over.

The Archdemon's tail whipped round and slammed into her, sending her over the desolated roof of the tower. A triumphant roar vibrated through the tangled mess of splintered bones and mangled flesh her body had become. The mindless intensity of the pain was so great she couldn't even scream.

_Please _was all she thought. Just one word, echoing through her head.

_Please._

She didn't feel the wind rushing around her. Didn't feel herself smash into the ground hundreds of feet below. The impact shattered what was left of her mutilated body. It was a fall from which there was no return, no recovery. No chance.

She died.

* * *

_In the year thirty of the Dragon Age, the Archdemon appeared. Stories of Archdemons and the Blights they brought upon the world were common knowledge, but nothing could prepare Ferelden for the horror it would face under the wrath of a fallen god in the form of a dragon. The darkspawn, horrifying, mindless creatures existing only to serve the Archdemon, moved across the already fractured country, destroying families, villages, towns and cities. Nothing could stop the blood tide._

_Two Grey Wardens, the only two in Ferelden after the loss at the Battle of Ostagar, tried. They travelled for a year, they gathered an army and their names became known to all after they restored peace to the throne. They single-handedly stopped a civil war and turned to face the Archdemon in a last battle to save Ferelden._

_But only one would face the Archdemon._

_And she would die trying to save the land she loved._

_This woman was known as The Last Grey Warden._


	2. Come All You Wicked

_A dark shape came to him in the soft grey mist of not quite awake and not quite asleep. It moved around the small strip of earth next to where he slept but didn't frighten him, exactly. The way it breathed, the way its clawed feet snagged hesitantly on the rough dirt told him it was sad, that it had known great pain._

_And it was leaving._

* * *

Dragon Age:** What Remains**  
Chapter 1:  
_\- Come All You Wicked to the World of the Empty -  
_By Soulkit

* * *

The land was bare. If Ferelden had shared the northern climates, there would be dry sand everywhere, piled in softly undulating dunes and drifting in the wind. Down in the south, it was just cracked rocks and dust. There were no trees in sight; the only vegetation was close to the ground, spiky, sparse and scattered. Nothing here could lay claim to the designation of alive. Nothing grew in the Blightlands. Anything that once did had died out, disappeared, unable to cope with the ever-present corruption.

Only the red earth remained. It stretched to the horizons in every direction, interrupted by a thin dark line running off into the distance. Extending in a featureless, gently winding strip of abused dirt, the road provided no landmarks, nothing to show it was once known to all as the Imperial Highway; the broken, heated surface vanished into the distance, each metre dizzyingly identical to the one before and the one after.

The single, lonely exception was the figure silently traversing the barren landscape, each footstep sending little hurricanes of dust into the air. Pointed ears marking his race, shoulders sagging, arms hanging limply, he had been walking for some time, some period impossible to measure save by the position of the sun. Any footprints had vanished, blown away by the gentle whisper of the wind.

An irregular, attention-catching blot on the landscape, the elf incongruously looked almost as if he'd been grown there, sprung up from the ground. Maybe he had. The land wasn't always bare. But it was hard to tell, to remember things like that. He remembered Lothering - three days ago in the other direction, nothing but rubble and mud and possessions littering the dead ground, everything dropped and abandoned in a single moment, and the Chantry just a pile of broken stone. And then there was the bodies. All the dead things who refused to give in, ripped apart, stripped clean, whispers in the air breaking through the silence, weaving in and out of his shadow, ghosts surrounding him like flies. He didn't remember if that lightning-struck tree he passed was the same one he'd spent the night under as a child, or if that dried out pond was where he learnt to swim. He used to know every stretch of land. Now it was just like Lothering. Lost memories beating against his skull, trying to pull him back to the darkest corners of his mind.

They scared him. But the Blightlands, their immense silence and infinite undistinguishable tracts of space, the infinite stark length of road, didn't. They used to, on some subconscious level, but he'd long since become used to the sight, especially so far south. After all, they rarely changed. Their irremediable, irreversible sameness lasted for uncounted days and weeks.

Before the dust there had been patchy, dying grass stretched thinly across the ground; before that, taller stands of untended vegetation spreading over the landscape. Sometimes the road was there. Sometimes not. It didn't matter as long as there was space to walk. No matter how deserted, how desolate the landscape around him became, there was always a road somewhere. There was always somewhere else to be, somewhere further along the line, somewhere past the horizon and away from everything.

His footsteps halted. He stood silent and listening, hand twitching, eyes raised for the first time in hours. Spiky, raven-black tresses parted revealing a young face half-covered by a scarf pulled up over his nose. The hair continued down over his neck, reaching down between his shoulder blades, tangled and unwashed, dripping over his shoulders. He wore, like most people in Ferelden, a mismatch of clothes all ripped and faded; an oversized shirt, loose pants hiding his lithe, muscular form from prying eyes and a pair of boots that were falling apart on his feet. Most precious of all rested against his back, attached to him by a makeshift bandoleer – half real leather from the dead body of what he was pretty sure was a Qunari, the remainder a length of old rope he'd taken from a man who'd hanged himself – was a sword. A katana to be precise, the grip on the handle wearing away with sweat, permanently stained by blood, the sheath starting to crack from age, but if unsheathed the metal would be blinding to look at it. It was the cleanest thing on his person.

His eyes scanned the horizon, fingers reaching up briefly to pull the scarf away from his sweaty skin and allow some air in. The land was vast, and made vaster still by the silence of the Blightlands. The wide, bare expanse stretching ever onwards. The bedrock of the land, stripped clean to its bones. The cities, compared to this, seem to have been but a humped ugly blot, cobbled together and squatting defensively on a hastily scavenged scrap of space.

The cities had gone, or had almost gone. They had lost their clenched, knuckle-white grip on their borrowed patch of time and crumbled. And even as the arrogantly looming cities disappeared into the horizon of decay, the land remained, vast and untouchable. No race could disturb it; they could never have done so to anything but their own tenuous place on it, their own fragile capabilities of survival.

The land remained, but it was not unchanged. No race could ever have destroyed it. But the land had been altered; it was not immutable, not immune to the corruption. Nothing was. Even now he could smell it, worming its way into everything, breaking it down into incorrigible darkness. The infertile land would spread, the lakes would recede, and the fleeting beauty of flowers blooming in arid wasteland vanished.

The land would forever exist.

But immortality did not equate to lack of decay.

And nothing would ever stop the _noise. _

It was there now. He could hear it on the wind, twisting, reshaping, a susurrus of dust that wasn't there before. Real or not real? To all sides there was the same nothingness he had endured for hours, the only irregularity about thirty paces to his left: a pass sinking between two ridges, disappearing into the corrupted earth. He wasn't sure where it ended. Perhaps it didn't. But the sound wasn't coming from there.

_You always forget. Look behind you, Jace._

He spun round so fast he nearly toppled over, head rattling, pulse rebounding through him. There. _There. _A cloud of dust too controlled to be the wind. Real or not real? If it was just the _noise _he truthfully wouldn't be sure. But he could smell them, couldn't he?

Couldn't he?

_I am Jace Amell_, he thought, _I am nineteen years old. My home is Ferelden. Not this place. Not the Blight. There is no such thing as _home _anymore. _

It was a trick he'd been taught a long time ago. Take a breath and tell yourself as clearly as you can who you are, because that was what got lost in so much noise and war and death. That's what you always forgot to remember. Especially Jace. He had always had trouble keeping his thoughts from spilling out of his head while others tried to force their way in. It was like everyone had a wall that separated their dreams from reality, but his had cracks in it. The dreams could wriggle and squeeze their way through, until it was hard to know the difference.

Sometimes

the

wall

broke

completely.

It was then

that

the

_real _

nightmares

came.

_Look behind you, Jace._

Stop. Breathe. Re-think that last thought. He could smell them. People. Not Darkspawn. Maybe five or six along with three horses, kicking up the earth and sending it up like a warning signal into the sky. It was real. Which meant their whoops and screams and _noise _were real too. They must have seen him. In the middle of this barren landscape it was impossible to miss him, and now that he was _looking _and not just _seeing _he knew they were heading towards him. Scavengers? Hunters? Did it matter? They'd do the same thing everyone else would do. It was already rattling around his head, all the war men spill out of themselves, all their swords and arrows that never let up, and even when he was sure they were done they were still screaming about it in their minds and their dreams and their thoughts they didn't even know they were thinking. Men and their war. He didn't know how they did it, how they stood each other.

Men were monsters and the Blight was their playground. He wasn't about to become one of their toys.

So he turned and ran.

Thirty paces to his left. A pass sinking between two ridges. He didn't know where it ended but in the end simple instinct drove him there. Maybe there would be a good hiding spot.

What had before been a gentle breeze now whipped up into a hurricane around his ears, his nerves flaring to life beneath his skin, feet barely touching the ground as he sped over the dry earth. Too loud, too obvious. He could _feel _the horses respond and veer in his direction; he could smell the riders' excitement rising as the chase began. Jace turned west down into the pass, one moment treading his way as quickly as possible downwards, the next skidding uncontrollably and sending a cloud of dust into the air like a signal flare. Snarling in frustration, his eyes darted upwards and found a ledge, vision tunnelling as he leapt towards it without a moment's hesitation.

Adrenaline was surging through him, setting his blood on fire and jump-starting his brain. Calloused fingers dug into rock and held on as his feet scrabbled for purchase. Inch by inch he made his way up. The climbing was agonisingly slow.

_Shift! Shift! _A voice in his head was urging him which he steadfastly ignored with a reflexive swipe at his head. It made perfect sense, but Jace knew he couldn't stop, and although he tried to push the shift as he hauled himself over the ledge, rocks crumbling beneath him, it wouldn't come. He needed to stop—breathe evenly—make it so—and he wasn't sure he had the time. He could clearly hear the horses crashing over the dirt now, and the excited shouts of the men atop them were as clear as his own breath.

The pulse this sent through him wasn't fear exactly. He knew what fear was. How many times each day, every day for three years, had he endured it? How many hundreds of times had he peered into the trees or bushes or rocks searching for horrifying, yellow-eyed faces? Day and night. As he dressed. As he ate. As he defecated. When he slept. How many times? And how many times had he actually found them, been forced to react the only way he knew how: sword and knife and fire and the hope that cold metal cut skin and fists and feet felt the give of living flesh against them because that was the only way he knew of surviving. The only way _anyone _knew of surviving in Ferelden anymore. Even then, the horrible knowledge followed that no matter how many you killed, no matter how many times you lived to see a new sunrise and sunset... more darkspawn would still come.

He could spend his entire life slaying genlocks, hurlocks, shrieks and ogres and still he would be the one running and gasping for air, tripping through a forest if he was lucky, and knowing that nothing he could do would ever stop the Blight.

The evil that could not be killed.

The evil that would someday take him too.

He might not want to be a toy, but he'd rather die than be taken by the Darkspawn. No, the pulse of emotion running through him wasn't fear. It was _anger._

Once more he found his feet and began sprinting along the narrow ridge he'd found himself upon. Behind him a horse whinnied in surprise and terror as it reached the steep slope that had tripped Jace up. The cries of the men were drowned out by _falling, don't follow, falling, _not a voice, but an understanding he had to swipe away from in front of his eyes. He needed to focus. The ledge he was on veered to the left suddenly and he barely squeezed round the bend, his sword scraping against stone and boots against dust and loose rock. There was no way the men hadn't yet seen him. The whoops behind him and the arrow sent whizzing past his ear confirmed it, an instinctive yelp escaping him as he felt the deadly tip graze his hair.

"You scared knife-ear?"

"Pissing your pants!"

"Run, piss-ear, run!"

Well, at least they weren't intelligent. On the unfortunate side, his little ledge was starting to run out of space and the idiots chasing below, now on foot, weren't running out of arrows.

_What are you doing Jace? Shift!_

He recoiled from the voice violently, the only thing that saved him from an arrow to the leg. Screams behind. Voices in front. Why couldn't they just leave him _alone_?

Above him the rock began to jut out, blocking out the sky, closing in all around him. It felt like he was burrowing into the earth. Gone to ground. That was what it was called. His hunters chased, arrows snapping off the rocks around him as the light began to dim and turn a sickly shade of orange-brown, but the earth, its smell, and the dull echo in his ears, called to him, held him, was more comforting than any bed.

A few seconds later, the ledge he was running along broke off into complete nothingness. He slid to a stop at the edge. Below him was a fifteen foot drop to the ground. A dead end. _His _dead end. For a moment he wondered if he could turn back the way he'd came and return to the plains above, but there'd be no chance against the horses even if he did manage to shift.

Jace turned his back to the rocks, backing into the uneven surface, a tight hard knot in his stomach. It still wasn't fear, more like dread, but it was there in a knot. A dread that he would have to do it again, spend another night of uneasy sleep dreaming about another person's death.

A death he would cause, that he would have to cause. Like he'd been taught, better them than him. He would hate it, but he would do it. He was too selfish to do anything else.

"Nowhere to run!"

"Target practice!"

"Get the piss-ear alive! Alive!"

"_JACE! SHIFT! GET A MOVE ON!"_

Blond hair. Amber eyes. Rebellious grin. There for a moment, exactly as Jace remembered, right in front of him. He cried out, arm flailing out in a wild swing and causing him to lose his balance. The ledge disappeared beneath him to the approving whoops of the hunters as he tumbled down. The world spun, rocks dug into his back, arms, head, his sword clattering deafeningly loud in the enclosed space. When he hit the ground it was all he could do to remember how to breathe. His muscles turned to water and his head clouded with confusion. One strand of his strength seemed to buckle and fall away from him, giving in. How long had it been since he'd eaten? How long since he'd slept? If another strand followed—and then another—he realised he would have no chance against these men.

He forced his head up, then the rest of his body, frantically spinning round to find his attackers, jerking his sword out and holding it in front of him with his left hand. Hair stuck to his face, pushed its way into his eyes and he swiped it away, breathing hard through his nose. How many? How many? He had scented five or six. How many were here?

The men: their laughter was raucous, offensive. One shoved him from behind and he stumbled into a roll, returning to his feet only to be grabbed by two more. His sword hung useless in his hand. Two behind, two in front. Jace did not feel like laughing, but he laughed. "You mean it takes this many of you to fight one knife-ear?"

"Lookie here, it knows how to speak!"

"You think you're a big man with that sword? You think you can hurt us? We're_ people_, not _knife-ears, _not _piss-ears. _You're about as strong as an Orlesian fart!"

But they let go of him. And as soon they did, Jace kicked out high and hard, catching the man nearest to him in the breastbone. He dropped. It took Jace by surprise – he hadn't thought to put a human man on the ground with one kick. It didn't occur to him that these men didn't take a fight like this seriously, that they weren't prepared for truly desperate blows.

For a moment, the others backed away as their comrade lay motionless. They were all wondering if he was dead. Jace was too. But he shoved the question away and swung his sword out, a wild swing with no grace or skill in it, missing his target by inches. Stupid, he chided himself, I've given myself away. Even _they _will be able to see I have no training with a sword.

Sure enough, other than a loud swear, there was only vague wariness in the other men, no fear. One drew a dagger and lunged for Jace, forcing him to bring his sword up in a clumsy parry. A second later a weight toppled onto Jace's back and he staggered, narrowly avoiding the next slash of the other man's dagger and eliciting another swear. Still inside a strong grasp, the classic move at this point would be to bring up his heel into the man's crotch. But for that move to be effective required too much accuracy, and the man expected it. He was already rising on his toes, thrusting his hips backwards to keep Jace from reaching his groin. Without seeing him, Jace knew it would bring his face closer, almost in Jace's hair; so instead of kicking, he lunged upward off the floor, with the powerful lunge of a young nineteen year old who'd spent years fighting and running, and jammed his head into the man's face.

Jace whirled in time to see the man stagger backward, his nose bleeding, gasping from surprise and pain. If he'd had time, Jace would have kept going, knowing he couldn't leave it there or this battle would only be fought again. Again and again until the will to fight was finished. The only way to end things was to hurt these men enough that their fear was stronger than their desire.

But there was no time. He sensed rather than saw the dagger drawing an arc towards him. No time to bring his sword up. No time to dodge. Never ever enough time.

The fire exploded from Jace with just a thought. In a moment the man with the dagger was screaming as blue flames burst into furious life all over his body. He was screaming and twisting backwards and screaming and writhing on the ground and screaming some more until he finally lay still in a burned mass of broken bone and twisted skin.

Jace's hand was trembling from where it was still raised, blue flames sparking from finger to finger and his shoulder aching from the gash now bleeding openly in time to his heartbeat roaring in his ears. He was shaking from the charge to his blood at being hit, shaking from being so fired up and so surprised, so angry and so much hating this country and the men and Darkspawn in it that it took him a while to register the silence that had descended.

"You're a mage," the one unscathed man whispered.

"A fubbing mage," the man with broken nose muttered thickly, eyes glassy. Jace could smell the charge in the air. A little fear. Mostly _excitement. _"We's gonna be rich boys!"

Jace answered by barging his shoulder into the man with the broken nose, driving him to the ground with all they style of a dead fish. He rounded on the last man standing, his fire slipping down the edge of his blade. For the first time, genuine fear flashed across the man's face. Jace took a step forward.

Then like an arrow firing through his head, the words twisted their way in and screamed amongst his thoughts.

_You always forget. _

_Look behind you, Jace._

The same moment, he actually washit with something, but it wasn't an arrow. It swept over his body like a smothering blanket, snapping his strength in half like a twig, bringing him to his knees as vertigo threatened to make him vomit. The most terrifying sensation Jace had ever felt and it wasn't the first time he'd felt it. His magic was gone, stripped away as easily as dead skin on an old wound. It was as if he'd suddenly lost both his arms. Magic was an integral part of him. Without it he couldn't even think. Too much white noise was in his head fuzzing everything else out apart from two words.

Templar. Smite.

His sword was gone. When did he drop it? No way to think. No way to know. A vicious open-handed slap sent him crashing to the ground. His scarf was ripped off his face as a fist knotted itself in his hair and a heavy weight dug into the small of his back. Even if Jace could have moved his arms there would have been no way to fight back. For the first time in hours he drew fresh air into his lungs, but his chest was too constricted, his head in too much pain, to register how sweet it tasted.

"Three gone? We leave you guys alone for one minute..."

"Who cares? We got ourselves an elf, and a mage at that." The hand in Jace's hair suddenly dragged his head upwards so hard he was sure he felt a few hairs part company from his scalp. Blood trickled from his nose and mouth. Vision blurred, it was through his sense of touch he felt his head forced one way, then the next, then shoved back down into the dirt. "Not bad looking, strong, healthy... perfect."

Two separate voices. Different from the first four. So there _had _been six men. Why didn't he realise that? He'd know there were five or six. Why did he only pay attention to four? Because he was hungry and thirsty and exhausted. When was the last time he'd eaten, drank, slept?

Jace opened one eye without realising he'd closed it, the other pressed into the dirt. The man he had burned to death was lying right in front of him. Most of his face was gone, nose sunk into his head, lips non-existent, visible eye leaking down his cheek. But the retina was still clumped together and stared at Jace as accusingly as a melting eye could, an entire life draining away into the dust, connecting with thousands of other dead. Soon the body would be nothing but dust as well. In the place in his head where pictures formed, Jace could see it: the particles blown across the world, spreading into everything and everyone, joining them until it was part of something new.

One day you might be part of me too, Jace said silently to the corpse. He knew it wasn't enough. So he added, I'm sorry.

He wondered what the man's name was. He wondered if the other men even knew. Probably not.

The world began to spin in several different ways. Broken pieces of conversation accompanied him into the darkness.

"Piss-ear... thought he could run... the fire though... hefty price... sword too... but it was _blue..._"

He should have kept running. Run like he always did.

But never fast enough.


	3. Bitterness of the Lonely

Dragon Age:** What Remains**  
Chapter 2:  
_\- All You Sick and the Bitterness of the Lonely -  
_By Soulkit

* * *

It was the way their shadows were cast. The sun was low in the sky behind them, and as he struggled forward on only one good leg, black hair and an impossibly blue eye kept pace and an arm around his shoulders. There was the blood on his hands, his face, his hair and the shock of the pain in his veins. He faltered. Black hair and an impossibly blue eye shouted encouragement: It's going to be okay, I'm going to get you out of here, keep running Bird's Eye. Looking at the ground, he watched their shadows, watched one slowly recede so that the other was stomping over knees, then a torso, then a head, and he was pulling away. Death was not the end. He really was on his own.

He lifted higher, pushing his strong leg into the earth, pulling at his sword. It was there in the distance. Far in the distance, but getting closer with each thundering beat of his heart.

It erupted from the ground and reached high into the sky – teeth and drool and a mass of pure, unrelenting darkness.

He was doing it. He was really doing it.

"It's the endgame. Run."

"What did you say Col?"

His eyes snapped open. That was Nathaniel's voice, speaking right next to him.

"Are you awake? You need to get ready. It's almost time."

Bird's Eye pushed his face against the cold stone, nudging at a stone with his jaw, clinging to _Endgame _and _the blood on his hands _and _death is not the end _even as the images slipped from his thoughts like ghosts. "What time is it?"

"Sunset. You need to get up, we need you tonight."

Bird's Eye took a deep breath. The air smelled sweaty and stale. Turning his head to the side, he made out the ugly orange glow slicing across the rooftops as night began to draw in over South Reach. He blinked twice, eyelids sticking together, before he sat up slowly. It was dark inside the alley where they sat waiting. At most he could only see about three feet in front of him, enough to make out Nathaniel – long dark hair pulled back in a horsetail, bow resting against his knees, silver eyes shining out like a wolf – and Katia – huddled into a blanket, shuddering every so often as she tried to keep in her coughs. Bird's Eye kept his gaze on her for a few moments, unconsciously seeking out the dark patches slowly growing over her pale skin.

"Interesting dream?" Katia asked quietly. She wasn't even looking at him.

"… You know what dreams are like." Bird's Eye answered eventually. Katia didn't like him. A lot of people didn't. He wasn't going to add to the animosity if he could help it.

He would tell Nathaniel though. Even now the dark-haired rogue was looking at him sideways, and Bird's Eye gave the smallest of nods in return. Yes, it was another one. We'll talk about it later.

"Where are we heading tonight?" said Bird's Eye. He knew Katia and Nathaniel would have discussed it while he slept. It used to annoy him that people made so many decisions that included him but never bothered to tell him until the time was right. An embarrassingly long period of time passed before he realised it was purely because of his age. Then it annoyed him for a different reason. He was fourteen summers old – practically a man now – but as far as most people were concerned his used extended as far as his eyes. When he was needed, they told him, but he wasn't 'old enough' to make decisions for the group.

It was a Blight. He'd gone through the same things everyone else had, had done for three years. He'd just barely turned eleven when it started. He'd seen his home burn, ran stumbling through the forest with his sister on his back and tears in his eyes. He'd been there when the darkspawn attacked the walls of South Reach, huddled in the dark with his sister and his mother and _children _and _women. _Like he was incapable of holding a sword, of fighting for the people he loved. All he could do was sit and wait as he flashed through dying men, roaring ogres, screaming shrieks, snarling hurlocks and genlocks, blood, screams and _death _everywhere (_death is not the end_). In some ways he'd been more injured gone to ground than if he'd been in the battle.

But at least something good had come out of it.

"Market Street," Nathaniel replied, speaking as he did to everyone else rather than speaking like he was to a child. "I know we've been a few times, but there should still be some supplies left."

"Not many, y'know. Others will have been there."

"Why d'you think _you're_ here?" Katia added in snidely. Bird's Eye didn't even glance at her even as another fit of haggard coughing escaped her. He felt sorry for her – a little. Blight sickness was a terrible way to go, but just because she was about to die didn't mean he had to like her. Dying didn't make you a good person.

"Will you be alright?" Nathaniel asked.

"I ain't dead yet." The animosity was gone. Who would have thought passive-aggressiveness was still a thing during the end of the world? "But just in case, let's get this over with quickly."

Because it would be such a mission to work out if you were dead or not, Bird's Eye thought with an eye-roll nobody knew about but him. That happened a lot these days. Things he thought of but never said, things he felt but never showed. He'd learnt a lot in the past three years, most of it from Nathaniel, some of it not. One of the things he'd worked out for himself was that the Blight punished emotion. You always had to be ready.

As they stood, picking up their weapons, Bird's Eye's steady hand wrapping around the handle of his sword, the young boy was the picture of calm. He was tall for his age, broadly built and strong. Intelligent green eyes peered out from between the brown bangs framing his face. Although young, he moved as an experienced warrior would, footsteps falling softly on uneven ground, hand always ready to pull out the sword resting at his hip. The three of them moved seamlessly together through the dim lit streets. Abandoned houses with broken windows and rotten wood were the only things to witnesses their passing.

It never used to be like this. When Bird's Eye had first arrived in South Reach the streets were alive and bustling at almost all hours, day or night. Merchants advertising their wares; prostitutes swaggering down the street with forced ease; guards patrolling, all oversized armour and impassive looks; drunks stumbling from wall to wall; families walking the streets with smiles; name it and it was there. As the days and weeks and months passed, as the Blight spread further, it all began to disappear. People began vanishing inside their homes before the sun even set. Horror stories were told in hurried whispers as people skittered like stray alley cats to complete their business and leave. When news of the Last Grey Warden reached them, the fear and hopelessness slowly cultivating had exploded. Panic had run rampant. So had the people. Every man for himself.

Until all that was left was this:

A ghost of a city inhabited by people filled with distrust and paranoia.

No way to leave. Not unless you wanted killed or eaten or dragged off by darkspawn.

An uncertain future, and with uncertainty came violence as survival instincts screamed to fight because there was no way to take flight.

Us against them.

_Us against them._

While a few hundred had inhabited the city before, now there were only small pockets of survivors left fighting over the meagre supplies they could find. Bird's Eye's group consisted of twelve. Once it had been almost thirty. But fighting, blight sickness, other illnesses, friend against friend, people who had just given up… the Blight took everyone in the end. That's what it felt like sometimes.

Bird's Eye knew the streets they ghosted through well. Better than even the oldest men who had lived here all their lives. Knowledge brought by an intrinsic need to know all escape routes, all methods of attack. Us against them. At some point that phrase had meant humanity against the darkspawn. Now it meant whoever was closest to you against whoever you came across. Food, medicine, clothes, blankets; it had to be won, it had to be stolen first. That was the way the world worked now.

War made monsters of men. That was what Nathaniel said. War made monsters of them all.

We're fighting each other when the real war is against the darkspawn. So what does that make us? Bird's Eye wondered often. It never stopped him going on scavenges. He needed to look after his little sister after all.

Bird's Eye, Nathaniel and Katia made their way quickly through the streets. Every so often they would come across someone – sleeping in a doorway, rummaging through rubble, staring out of starving eyes and waiting to pounce on the first unsuspecting soul for whatever they could scavenge – but always avoided them. Bird's Eye had heard the stories of raids gone wrong, seen the haunted faces of those who had been forced to kill. His hand tightened into a fist. He would kill if he had to. He _would. _And he wouldn't mope about it either. You hit first or you don't get to hit at all. Just like Nathaniel said.

Finally, a few streets back from Market Street they paused in a deserted alley, all three of them crouching behind a pile of rocks that smelled like something had died beneath them. None of them paid attention. They had smelled worse.

"Alright, Bird's Eye," Nathaniel nodded to the younger boy as he drew his bow and prepared to keep a look out. "See what you can."

Katia took up her own stance next to him, facing the other direction. Bird's Eye did the opposite, forcing himself to relax and clear his mind, keeping his eyes open. He couldn't see with his eyes closed.

That was his way after all – to see. He was the boy with the sight. He didn't actually _see _things, of course. Not in the way most people thinking of seeing, the physical interaction of light, pupil, retina and optic nerve. His sight was so much more fine-tuned than that, a spirit thing. Mysterious too – a living growing part of him, after all these years still surprising and new. Sometimes it simply came to him, like the dream he had awoken from. But if he concentrated hard enough—stopped—breathed—made it so—he could see whenever he needed to.

Fade-touched. That's what they called him, both with fear and reverence. Before the Blight, if anyone had known of his strange gift he would have been dragged to the circle and never heard from again. Now it was a tactical advantage they couldn't afford to lose.

It still didn't stop them from treating him like a child.

The sight came to Bird's Eye slowly, murky outlines of deserted shops and barren shelves. The street was a patchwork of holes and rubble and dead bodies – this place had been one of the worst for fighting at the start. Now it was as silent as a grave. It may as well have been one. Nobody was going to move those bodies any time soon. The final thing that came to him was the clock tower looming over the city that, with the darkness as its cloak, looked cold and sinister, like a master watching silently as his slaves were whipped in front of him. A shudder ran down Bird's Eye's back which he quickly forced to a stop. He was a man. He shouldn't be afraid of clock towers.

"I don't see anyone," said Bird's Eye and was glad to find no tremor in his voice. "Let's get mo—"

Bird's Eye stopped silent as another vision hit him. There was no real way to describe it. One moment he was speaking to Katia and Nathaniel, the next he was watching the doors of the clock tower burst open, its darkness spilling out like a flood, swarming over the whole city until—

Until—

There, just for a moment—

His mother screaming as she was pulled into the darkness—

"_Save her Col! Do not lose her!"_

"Col!"

Then he was back in the alley, blood in his mouth from where he must have recoiled away and toppled to the ground. Nathaniel was kneeling over him in concern, asking him if he was alright, and Katia was watching from the side, eyes widened with fear and wariness, clutching her daggers with a knuckle-white grip. She may not like him, but she knew the truth of his visions. Bird's Eye had been right too many times.

"I need to—" Bird's Eye frantically shook his head. "I can't just— They're going to—"

But whatever words were trying to force their way out his mouth he never found out. A resounding boom knocked Nathaniel and Katia to the ground as a flare of red fire jetted into the sky, illuminating the night, originating from just a few streets over, from Market Street, from—

"The clock tower," Bird's Eye whispered too quietly for the others to hear.

"That was a fire ball," Nate said getting to his feet, eyes narrowed in confusion.

"A fire ball? A mage?" Katia asked loudly, too loudly, her body protesting with her worst coughing fit yet. It didn't stop Bird's Eye from seeing the look sent his way.

"_I _didn't do it, y'know," he snapped in a momentary loss of control.

"Col."

Bird's Eye turned to Nathaniel.

"That came from the clock tower didn't it?"

The brunette's response was reduced to a nod, his voice drowned out by the sudden roar that echoed through the night air, accompanied by the crackling of flames and a chorus of distant yells as the rest of the city saw that _something _was happening. The three scavengers were the only ones close enough to understand the roar and what it meant. In the bellowing silence following the end of the roar, as one they spoke with identical, horrified voices.

Darkspawn.

No time to think. Grunting with effort as he burst upwards, Bird's Eye took off running towards Market Street.

"Col!" Nathaniel shouted, reaching out as if to grab and hold him back. "What do you think you're doing?"

He and Katia ran after the boy, catching up with him in a few strides. All three turned the corner in time to see another huge burst of fire leap up from the centre of Market Street. The pillar of fire towered into the sky, scattering flaming brands down like rain, riding the wind and setting many buildings on fire.

The fire wasn't what caught Bird's Eye's attention. "What the hell is that?" he mumbled, shock nearly choking his voice back. Where before the clock tower had been darkness, now it was illuminated like a beacon, showing the twisted gait of darkspawn as they poured from the destroyed doors. At the centre stood a colossal beast, ringed in flames, roaring and seeming to glow red in the fires that danced around it like dervishes. The monster reared back, opened its gaping mouth and roared a second time as it smashed an impossibly thick arm through the top floor of a building and very nearly sent the whole structure collapsing in on itself. By now acrid smoke was rising into the air and collecting over the closest streets of the city, hanging low enough to reflect much of the bloody light from the fires eagerly spreading, bathing the entire scene in a hellish glow.

"That's an ogre," said Nathaniel, crouching low to avoid being seen by the dozens of darkspawn surrounding the monster like an honour guard. One arm extended, he motioned towards the darkspawn nearest the ogre, adding in a feral growl, "And they have an emissary with them."

Bird's Eye clenched one fist in rage as he watched the ogre barrel through a second house, smashing the structure to splinters. Images were flashing through his mind, figures running towards the fire, panicked yells, deaths that were coming, that couldn't be stopped by anything or anyone. He dug his fingernails harder into his skin, desperate to hold onto an image that made _sense. How _did they do this? How long had they been _in_ there? Why hadn't he _known_?

"We have to do something," he said, choking on his own voice. Fear? Anger? What did he feel? What were they going to do?

"What?" Katia echoed his thoughts. "What are we supposed to do?"

As if in answer, a bolt of lightning seared through the air from a side street and slammed into the ogre's flank, nearly knocking the beast over and making it roar in pain. The three humans and the darkspawn turned and traced the path of the bolt along a smoking arc back to the source; a man dressed in armour, holding a staff. Who it was, Bird's Eye didn't know, but Nathaniel did.

"He's wearing armour. He must be from the group who took the barracks."

"They must have been heading here already," Katia agreed.

Another glare was sent Bird's Eye's way. He didn't care. He couldn't take his eyes off the armoured men suddenly pouring into battle, just like he'd seen the time the darkspawn had attacked the walls.

"They're going to die." He spoke without thinking, the knowledge coming to him in one terrifying instant. Katia and Nathaniel glanced at each other as Bird's Eye repeated, "We have to do something."

But he didn't move. Instead he watched as the emissary launched another fireball, this time towards the men. He watched the men flinch in the face of searing heat, but one of them held their ground and barked an order, "Bring up a barrier, now!"

Without a trace of hesitation – in fact he'd already been moving – the mage gripped his staff with both hands and slammed it into the ground. A wave of prismatic energy spread over the men and rocketed outwards to form a wall directly between the men and the darkspawn. The fire ball crashed into the wall and the mage faltered to one knee as the energy blast exploded and shook the ground. The barrier flickered but held strong and the mage immediately stood back up as a flurry of arrows shot in long arcs around the barrier, flying towards the darkspawn.

There were three archers, all firing within half a second of each other, and another volley of arrows flew towards the monstrous enemies, slashing into the ogre like shuriken and drawing thin lines of blood across its body. Beside Bird's Eye, Nathaniel's fist clenched, but he remained stone-faced, knowing the battle could turn at any instant.

"Are you sure Col?" the rogue asked quietly. "Are you sure they're going to die?"

Bird's Eye said nothing for a few moments, watching the men with swords begin to advance on the snarling hurlocks and genlocks. No shrieks in sight. He turned to Nathaniel and nodded once.

"Then get ready to move."

Nathaniel nocked an arrow as Katia gripped her daggers. Bird's Eye wrapped his hand around his sword. Only then did he realise how much he was sweating.

"Try not to cry," Katia said to him.

Bird's Eye nearly turned on her. They were about to go into battle. Putting him down was low and it was stupid.

Anything to put me down. Every chance they get.

And what are you doing you idiot? You're still just sitting here. You could have moved in front of her, you could have answered. Instead, you're shooting your stupid self in the stupid foot. And why? None of this makes sense. None of this is going to help you. You want to be respected, not thought of with contempt. So why are you doing things to make you look stupid and young and scared and unreliable?

And you're still sitting here, frozen. What's wrong with you? You're a man, aren't you? You're not afraid to go out every night to scavenge for the group. You haven't been for years. You're a good fighter. If you don't do something, they will die, you will die, your _sister _will die.

Move.

Bird's Eye moved. He would not be afraid. He would _not. _

"You know what you're doing, Col," Nathaniel said as he lined up his shot. A ghost of a smile danced across his lips as he glanced sideways at the brunette. "You've fought before, and I'll look out for you."

I've fought against starving and cold and untrained men and women before. Never darkspawn. There must be at least thirty. Thirty against eleven at most. What am I supposed to do?

But Bird's Eye had no time to work it out. Nathaniel stood gracefully and fired one arrow. It hissed through the air with such speed Bird's Eye could barely follow it. It lanced through the ogre's knee then shattered into a hundred arcs of fire that raced over the darkspawn's carapace. The ogre screeched in pain and collapsed beneath its shattered limb.

Gotcha, Bird's Eye thought. As the darkspawn turned towards them, Bird's Eye and Katia moved forwards from their hiding place. The younger boy moved the way he'd been taught, keeping low and holding his sword diagonally in front of his upper body, making himself a smaller target. A genlock snarled in fury, leathery skin stretched and twisted over unnatural muscle and bone, sickly yellow eyes fixated on him as its mouth opened to reveal sharp teeth. If he'd never seen one before, Bird's Eye might have hesitated, might have been frozen by fear. But he _had _seen them. So he didn't hesitate as dodged the axe swing and swung his own sword with deadly accuracy into its neck.

I did it. I helped. I can do this.

But what did stop him was the weight of it. His arms juddered as metal struggled through thick skin, and as the genlock fell with a spray of blood Bird's Eye was almost dragged down with it. His sword was stuck? No, no, _no._

Grunting with effort, Bird's Eye pulled with all his strength, barely paying attention to his surroundings.

"Col!" the brunette heard Nathaniel shout as a hurlock turned and refocused its attention on Bird's Eye, sheer rage and killer intent burning in its eyes. "Get out of there!"

But Bird's Eye couldn't. The other group of men were busy with the emissary and the ogre stumbling around like a mad drunk, bellowing in rage and pain, deadly horns atop its head more dangerous than waking a sleeping bear. The rest of the darkspawn had already spread out, looking to go as far into the city as possible, and Bird's Eye couldn't go without a weapon. The hurlock bared down on him, twice his height and immeasurably more ferocious. He pulled harder. His sword barely moved an inch. Pull. _Pull. _Five seconds and it would be on him.

He tugged again. The genlock's head snapped to the side, but his sword remained fused into tough muscle and bone.

Four seconds.

_They're going to die. _But he wouldn't. He _couldn't. "Do not lose her!"_

Three seconds.

Come on! A vicious tug and it came free, but the strength of his pull sent him spinning to the ground.

Two seconds.

Stand up, hold your sword up, do _something._

One second.

No.

He

did

not

want

to

die

here.

The hurlock screeched, sword crashing down—

Then it screamed as a blade sliced through its arm, the sound cut off a moment later as a second blade followed into its neck. When it fell, Bird's Eye looked up in shock to see Katia staring down at him. She nodded. He was too startled to do anything but nod back. He turned back to stare at the ongoing fight, not noticing that Katia swooned to one side and nearly collapsed. He was a little distracted by the lightning arcing towards him.

A yelp escaped him as he jumped to one side, behind the nearby rubble of a partially building as the emissary raised its staff, preparing to unleash yet another attack. "Katia!" Bird's Eye barked, realising the woman had failed to move and instead lay in a heap in the middle of the road, panting and sweating and coughing.

Ignoring the blistering heat that sapped his strength and the imminent attack from the emissary, Bird's Eye threw himself back into the middle of the street and dragged Katia's arm around his shoulder, supporting her onto her feet.

"Run!" Nathaniel roared as the emissary bolted forwards and energy built from its hands to the tip of its staff. A withering blast of blood red fire flew from its body and straight towards Bird's Eye and Katia. The brunette thought he heard Nathaniel yelling out behind them as one of the rogue's arrows whipped past his ear.

Bird's Eye didn't even look up to watch the fire rocket towards him, but gasped in surprise as a brilliant flash of white light nearly blinded him. There was absolutely no time at all between the formation of the barrier and impact from the fire. The searing wave of heat rolled around the shield like a river hitting a boulder, flanking Bird's Eye and Katia on three sides.

"Fall back!" An unfamiliar voice called, followed by the approaching sound of metal feet running towards them. When the fire finally cleared, it was to find the men retreating back towards them, regrouping at a slightly bemused Nathaniel's location. Bird's Eye was much the same, barely registering as Katia stumbled away from him, following the other men. One nodded at Bird's Eye, the one holding the staff.

"Thanks." Bird's Eye said, knowing that barrier was the only reason he was alive, then he turned and ran back to Nathaniel without waiting for an answer.

At least he tried.

The emissary was already in the throes of yet another fire ball, and shot the chromatic blast of energy through the roof of a building five metres to Bird's Eye's left.

As the rumbling explosion reverberated through the ground, Bird's Eye was already moving from the burning building. Too late he recognised it as the shop which held the oil the survivors of South Reach agreed to leave untouched in case of another attack by darkspawn. Then, for a brief moment, Bird's Eye was sure the world had exploded. Everything turned white and before he heard absolutely nothing, the roaring explosion of the detonating oil blotted out all other sound. On top of the wave of heat he felt slam in on him from all sides like a collapsing building, he noted a screaming pain pulsating in his side.

After that Bird's Eye would never be sure. It was too jumbled, too incoherent. Blue fire and screams and blood and war and _death is not the end _but then what is the end? Voices were everywhere, screaming into the noise and darkness, a hurricane of pain destroying everything, and existing in the eye stood a boy and a dragon, an elf and a fallen god. Black hair and a blue eye stared at the beast in front of him, body shaking, eye widened, whimpering in fear as the dragon advanced.

The hurricane moved, turning everything in its path to dust. The boy was the only one who could stop it. The only one who could kill the dragon and end it all. If he didn't, they would all die.

_It's the Endgame. Run._

And the boy turned and ran.

_You know what dreams are like._

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Obscene graffiti.

Smashed windows.

Human Crew tags, their logo, along with warnings to elves and dwarves to get out.

In the distance, up the street, too far away for Bree to want to chase after, a couple of kids, maybe ten years old, maybe not even that. Barely visible in the moonlight. Just outlines. The kids passing a bottle back and forth, taking swigs, staggering.

Grass growing everywhere. Weeds forcing their way up through cracks in the street. Trash: charred books, splintered furniture, ripped paper bags, articles of clothing, ruined bows and swords, single shoes, broken toys, cracked candlesticks and broken bottles – anything that wasn't actually edible – formed random, colourful collections. They were poignant reminders of better days.

Darkness so deep you'd have to walk off into the wilderness in the old days to experience anything like it.

Not a street or a porch light. Fire was too dangerous, drew too much attention. Maybe it always would now.

No one wasting candles, not anymore. Those, too, were in very short supply.

And not many trying to light trash fires. Not after the fire that burned down three homes and burned on kid so bad, it took Bree and Wynne half a day to save him.

Very little water. Too risky to go to the lake. Most people thought it was cursed now. Nothing to do about fire but watch it burn and get out of its way.

New Crestwood, Ferelden.

It used be known simply as Crestwood. But during the first year of the Blight, darkspawn had sabotaged the dam's controls, letting water flood the old town and killing so many. The few buildings that had escaped the water had grown into more through tireless work and endless days and refugees searching for somewhere, anywhere, to escape the darkspawn. Now there was a festering sprawl of huts made from wood, iron and canvas, or a mixture of all three.

Bree was a mage with power to heal. She knew very little offensive spells. She hadn't needed to. She had been her alienage's. She hadn't wanted to draw attention to herself by learning anything that could threaten the humans. She had never needed to learn anything more. And during a Blight there was little time to study.

Another Human Crew logo reached her view, spread over the side of a hastily constructed shack. Despite the shiver that ran down her spine, she couldn't help but smile grimly. A man named Will, leader of the Human Crew, had forbidden people to go anywhere near the mages, the elves or the dwarves. Most of the humans complied. It didn't stop them from coming to her when they were hurt. It did stop them from wandering over to the side of the village 'designated' to the non-humans.

The fear had spread. A disease. It leaped from person to person.

People sat in the dark, afraid. Always afraid. Of those different from themselves, of powers they didn't understand.

Bree was in the west end, the dangerous part of town, the part Will had declared off-limits to non-humans. She didn't particularly want to be here. Not because she was intimidated by Will's campaign of fear. She was the Healer. Nobody messed with her. And it wasn't because she was collecting herbs at such a late hour. She knew Wynne and her needed more.

But Wynne had sent her because she had to show the flag, so to speak, demonstrate that she knew her power over the inhabitants of this village. People needed that. They needed to see that someone would still protect them, or at least heal them after whatever battle was fought. Wynne was a human, so walking through the human side of town made no difference. Bree was an elf, a non-human, and the Human Crew had to be shown some way their idiotic campaign was as stupid as their name. That way was _her._

She had resisted the role, but it had come to her anyway. She was the only person who could stop the tensions from rising high enough to cause anything like the fight last year when the Human Crew had first been created. There had been at least ninety people cramped into the village back then. Now it was down to about forty, most of them humans. So Bree was determined to play out her part. Whenever she let up, whenever she lost focus, retreated back to her own people, something awful happened.

So many dead because of her.

But the ones still alive will come round eventually, Bree thought. They'll understand the only way to survive the darkspawn is to stick together. This won't last forever.

Until then, Bree would do whatever she could to make sure nobody else died.

She was halfway to the outskirts of town when she realised someone was walking towards her. She tenser, fearing the worst. Nobody would hurt her outright. Even with Wynne as another healer, everyone knew Bree was better. Most wouldn't risk her refusal to heal them. But there was no telling what Will would do. And always out there – somewhere – darkspawn. There hadn't been many round these parts since the dam flooded, but Bree didn't kid herself into believing this was permanent. As long as there were people, darkspawn would be close behind.

And Maker knew what other horrors were out in that fading night – human or not. Out in the dark mountains, the black caves, the tunnels underneath the village, the plains to the east. The too-calm lake.

The Blight never let up.

But this just looked like a dwarf.

"Ho, Bree," a voice said and Bree relaxed.

"Ho, Bodahn. Kind of late isn't it? This isn't exactly a safe place for you."

He was a sweet man who managed mostly to stay out of the various wars and factions raging within Crestwood. He was a merchant who scavenged whatever he could find – food, clothing, various substances, weapons – repaired what he could and then traded it on. A business man even during the end of the world. And it helped convince people to work when there was something interesting they could trade their earnings for. From what Bree had seen, though, the thing Bodahn cared about most was his adopted son Sandal.

"I wouldn't say it was much safer for you either," Bodahn said with an ironic smile, motioning towards Bree's pointed ears. With her dirty blond hair pulled back into a horsetail and her scarf secured underneath her ears, it wasn't hard to notice them. But he knew, of course, that she was the safest person in this town. He had a small dagger in one hand, the grip cushioned with fabric. Nobody walked around without a weapon, especially at night. Even Bree had a metal pipe strapped to her belt.

"You eating, neh?"

That had become the standard greeting. Not, 'How are you?' But, 'Are you eating?'

"We're getting by." Bodahn said. His ghostly pale skin, short stature and rounded face made him seem somehow vulnerable. Of course the dagger, the piercing, pale eyes, the blood stained scarf over his mouth and nose, and the leather armour he was wearing over his clothes made him seem not entirely gentle.

"What are you doing out here anyway?"

"I've got to keep looking for things to sell, don't I? Hard to search over here during the day. Most of the humans over here are okay actually. The few that are up at this time."

"Eh."

"Mostly."

"You run into trouble don't hesitate to find me, neh?"

"Of course," Bodahn said with a genuine smile this time. "I won't forget how you helped my boy."

When Bodahn and Sandal fist arrived, it had been during the time Will was riling everyone up, just before any fights had broken out. Sandal was a bit dim in the head, but he was nice and had an amazing ability to enchant weapons and armour. A savant was how Bodahn described him. Will had not agreed. It was only with Bree's intervention that the dwarf hadn't been literally stoned to death.

"Hard to forget," Bree replied. "But let's try. The Human Crew won't go away if we don't."

Bodahn didn't reply. Bree waited. The sound of a glass bottle shattering and high-pitched giggling from the distance behind her. The kids throwing their emptied bottle of booze. A boy named Kyle had been found dead with a bottle of vodka in his hand. Nobody really had time to keep an eye on the orphans.

"Eh," Bodahn finally said, then realising what he'd done, corrected himself. "I mean, yes."

"Using alienage slang won't hurt you."

"It isn't how I was taught." Bodahn tilted his head apologetically. "The Blight won't last forever. I truly believe that. And we have to remember who we were before or we won't be anybody afterwards."

"… Eh. Let's hope the rest of Thedas opens their borders sometime soon to bring the cavalry."

"Let's hope they aren't like Will when they do. Anyhow, I better be getting back to Sandal."

"Night, Bodahn. Take care."

She left him and continued walking, thinking about his words. Bodahn hadn't said _if _they come, he'd said _when. _Another thing Bree liked so much about him. He believed in people. It helped her believe too.

Which brought the next thing to mind. Who we were before. Who was I before? I was eleven when I first found my talent in magic. For ten years I hid myself away so the shems couldn't send me to the circle. Now everyone knows I'm a mage. I'm the Healer. That's who I am in the Blight. Who will that make me after?

One thing was for sure, she wasn't going back to the alienage. She didn't think any elf would. Times had changed. Everyone was on equal footing now. Just men and women trying to survive. That was why they had to forget what had been done. If they didn't, they would have to wake up each morning, look in the mirror and know that they were just as capable of being the same monsters as those they accused.

Just because you looked different on the outside didn't mean you were any different on the inside.

She climbed the road up past what was supposed to be the mayor's house, glancing up at the balcony. Nothing official had ever been decided, but now it was known to most as Will's house. The mayor had been moved to a shack next to the chantry, something he didn't seem too bothered about. He spent most his time kneeling in front of Andraste nowadays.

Booker, Will's mabari, must have heard her because he gave a short, sharp warning bark.

"Just me, Book," Bree said.

There were very few cats and dogs left alive in Ferelden. The only reason Booker hadn't become dog stew was because he belonged to Will.

From there it was a short journey to the fields where a meagre supply of elfroot, royal elfroot and crystal grace could be found. The ground was too trampled inside the village to grow anything. All the spindleweed they needed was down by the lake, although Bree was in no hurry to go down there in the dark. She didn't particularly believe it was _haunted _per say, but with so many people having died so quickly, there was bound to be a few spirits lingering around the veil, trying to push through. Not the safest place for a mage.

The moonlight had led her this far, but as she approached the plants she allowed her magic to breathe into a tiny fireball inside her hand. As long as she was quick and kept close to the ground, nothing, human or otherwise, would see it. She couldn't risk picking plants swallowed by the Blight. She had to burn them anyway lest the sickness spread. Luckily it had only been a few elfroot plants that had been tainted so far. Royal elfroot and crystal grace seeds were always in short supply.

She knelt and carefully examined the nearest elfroot, moving her hand to light the length of the stem and each leaf. When there was no sign of the black stains that signalled the taint, she then picked the plant, carefully leaving enough so it would grow again, and examined the inside of the stem from both the part she had taken off and the part still in the ground. If there was still no sign of sickness, she would place it in her pouch and move onto the next. She had been using this process for so long she made quick work of it, nodding in satisfaction when she found this time around that none of the elfroot plants were tainted.

When she moved on to the crystal grace, however, it was a different story. It was only one, but she noticed it immediately. Dark lines reached up the green stems like skeletal fingers, wrapping themselves around the blue flowers and blacking out the pink pistils. She examined it for a moment, inexplicably fascinated by the sight. She couldn't help it. It was oddly beautiful. Hard to believe one bite would kill her.

She shook her head and sighed. Wynne wouldn't be happy. Still moving on autopilot, she ripped the entire flower out of the ground and fed it into the flame in her palm. It burned quickly without a fuss. Afterwards she moved the fire down into the soil and scorched the earth where the crystal grace had been. She would have to pick the other ones quickly or they would also—

Sound.

Bree crouched, extinguished her flame and drew her pipe out of her belt, all in one fluid, long practised movement.

She listened and watched, hard. She heard her heart pounding and willed it to slow, slow, quiet so she could listen. Her breath was ragged but she calmed it a little, at least. She scanned slowly, turning her upper body left to right then back, covering the area where she thought the sound had come from. She listened hard in all directions.

Nothing.

Sound!

Crunching leaves and crumbling earth. It was heavy, whatever it was, and it was nearby.

And heading straight for her.

Something in the pit of her stomach tightened. Her lips were dry and she had no saliva to wet them. She didn't dare move. Maybe it wouldn't see her. She didn't know what she would do if it did. She was no fighter. All she could do in a fight was swing her pipe madly and throw up barriers. Would that be enough to let her get back to town? To raise the alarm? And who would answer if she did? The tenuous peace in the village was held only by the lack of violence. If violence became necessary, how far would it spread?

A shadow moved, made darker by the night around it. Bree stopped breathing. What madness would the Blight throw at her now?

It moved in a twisted gait of a walk, looking oddly deformed. She'd never seen movement like it. But she'd heard stories of corpses who rose from the dead via blood magic. Was this what she was facing? Where would it have come from?

The lake…

Maybe it really was haunted.

It came closer and closer. By now Bree could hear distorted gasping breaths emanating from it. Did corpses breathe? If they did, Bree wouldn't be surprised if they did like that. She hugged herself with one arm. She'd forgotten how quickly death could come. There was no heroic build-up, no siren calls. One moment you were alive and then you were dead. It was simple, boring.

Nobody would even know. It made her even more terrified, thinking like that. She needed courage. If she could force her magic to make a bigger flame, maybe she could scare it off, but she needed to stop—breathe—make it so. She couldn't do it while cowering like a mouse.

Gritting her teeth, she unfurled her free arm from around herself and concentrated on her magic. It flowed sluggishly whenever she asked it to do anything other than heal. It wasn't used to being asked to do something primal. Closer and closer the shadow moved as if it had sensed her presence. Bree took a breath. Then another. Then shot the fire out of her hand.

In all honesty it was… completely pathetic. Little more than the size of a child's fist. But it illuminated the area enough to let Bree see it was not, in fact, a corpse. It was a woman. And she was hurt.

The woman cried out in alarm as the fire shot passed her head and fizzled out of existence after a couple of metres. Bree heard rather than saw her fall to the ground, a thump on the earth no different to the sound of someone dropping a sack of potatoes. Bree moved instantly, abandoning the herbs in favour of making sure she hadn't burned the poor woman's face off.

"Maker, I'm so sorry!"

A grunt of pain answered her as she knelt down and created another fire ball in her hand. She really shouldn't have been surprise when she noted the woman flinching away from it and had to shake off the surge of guilt that ran through her.

"I'm sorry I thought you were…" Bree trailed off when she finally noticed the woman's injuries.

They were bad.

Very bad.

If Bree hadn't just seen Bodahn wearing leather armour, she might not have recognised the slashed belts and cracked buckles covering the woman's petite frame. Lithe, sharp limbs were covered in cuts and bruises, and for a moment Bree thought the red length of hair was blood. But no, that was just the flames. The fire didn't mask how pale her skin was, nor how clammy. Worst of all, sticking through her side was an arrow, a kind Bree had never seen. It was twisted into shape unevenly, the tip as dark as the night sky underneath the layer of blood slathered across it. This was not an arrow forged by human hands.

_Darkspawn._

"What happened to you?" Bree's voice shook. "Who attacked you, neh?"

The woman drew in another ragged breath, eyes closed, and didn't reply.

"I need to know!"

The woman's eyes snapped open. With startling speed and strength, she grasped at Bree's robes. Instinctively Bree tried to pull away, but the woman for all her loss of blood – could there be so much blood in one woman? – had strength. The strength of the dying.

No. She would save her. That was what she did.

The woman mumbled words Bree couldn't understand. A jumble of sounds she couldn't make out. She wanted to pull away. She was afraid. The woman drew in her breath painfully and tried again. She wet her lips with her tongue and smeared red blood across her teeth.

Is this really happening? Is this real?

"Coming." One word exhausted her. But she said it again. "Coming."

It seemed like agony for her to speak. But Bree had to know. She swallowed. "What is?"

"They… coming."

"Who? Who is coming?"

A few painful seconds passed. A desperate string of incoherent words. What accent was it? Not Ferelden for certain. Had help finally been sent? The woman shuddered and made one final attempt to make Bree understand.

"Darkspawn."

Then consciousness failed her and Bree was left alone with a dying woman, suddenly feeling like the world was a lot darker than before.

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Darkspawn were nearby.

Of course they were. It was a Blight. When were they _not _nearby? It would be like Orlais without the stinky cheeses or Tevinter without blood magic or Ferelden without dogs. Although that being said he wasn't entirely sure how many dogs were left in the country. Food was in such short supply most of them had probably been eaten.

Probably not best to think about food at the moment.

He shifted in his cage, his back screaming in protest. The way he'd been shoved into the gibbet (seriously, who came up with that name? Sounded like a kind of fish) wasn't exactly comfortable: body bent double, knees bent against his chest and feet practically up to the same height as his face, wrists tied behind him and all his weight resting on his tail bone. He wondered if he'd even be able to walk when he was let out of here.

_If _he was let out of here.

Probably best not to think about that either.

"Well what else is there to think about?" he grumbled to himself. Nobody answered, but he hadn't been expecting one.

How long had he been here now? A week if he measured by how many times he'd fallen asleep and woken up, but there was really no way to tell. His cage was located inside a cave and his only source of light was a single torch that was only relit whenever his captors brought him food, which wasn't often and, as far he could tell, had no regularity to it. The only things he really knew for sure was he was somewhere in the Southron Hills, he was in the captivity of about twelve men, and he had been talking to himself far too much lately.

Oh, and his captors were slavers.

He sighed and cracked his neck, eyes closed.

Didn't people have better things to do during the end of the world? Apparently not, although it wasn't like he could talk. Exactly who his captors were selling to he had no idea, but if he thought hard enough he could come up with a few explanations. Fodder to fend off darkspawn and raiders, expendable men to go searching for supplies in dangerous areas, workers to go down to the gold mines and dig and dig and dig until they were too sick to work or they were dead. It sickened him. This whole country sickened him. Strange considering how much he had once loved it.

But times changed and so did people.

Hard to believe they changed so quickly.

If three years could be called 'quickly'.

"_You okay?"_

"_Hmm? Yeah, I'm alright. It's just…"_

"_Seven months to the day, right?"_

"… _Yeah. Doesn't feel like it."_

"_I know. Feels like no time at all."_

"_Funny. I always thought a lot could happen in seven months."_

"_What do you call what we've been doing? It's all relative. Looking back is always shorter than looking forward."_

"_I'm guessing you read that in a book."_

"_Actually, my mother told me."_

"…_Ah."_

A sharp intake of breath. Stupid memories. It'd be easier to forget everything.

He wondered what that would be like, losing three years of his life. He'd forget the pain of Ostagar, the gruelling trek across Ferelden and constantly wondering if what they planned was even possible, the trial of the Deep Roads, the madness of Kinloch Hold, the horror of Fort Drakon, and, worst of all, the Landsmeet – that one decision, that single moment he was sure destroyed everything about him. Or maybe the worst came after, the news that the Last Grey Warden was dead and the Archdemon lived.

_She _was dead. And he hadn't been there to stop it.

And all of that had happened in the space of a year. It was unbelievable. Just as unbelievable was how quickly things fell apart. In the space of two years Ferelden had been reduced to insanity. No government, no laws, no nothing. Every man for himself. The cities had either been taken or cut themselves off, keeping everything out and everything else in. Who knew what went on behind those walls? If any of the holds still stood, they stood deserted, decorated by the dead. A few of the outlying villages still survived, but they only would for so long. Too many people cramped into the one space. He'd heard about what happened in Crestwood. Humans had turned against the elves and dwarves and the fight that broke out nearly destroyed them all.

What were any of them supposed to do when they were too busy fighting themselves to fight the darkspawn?

No hope of help from the rest of Thedas. That bastard Loghain had seen to that when he shut off communication during the first year of the Blight. The rest was done by the number of refugees pouring out of Ferelden. The Free Marches turned them back. Orlais closed its borders. They didn't understand what was happening and chose to ignore it instead. Why wouldn't they? They hated Ferelden. Far too many did. He hated it too.

Then there were the people who simply gave up. He'd found the bodies everywhere, hanging from trees, impaled on swords, mangled upon rocks under high cliffs, people who couldn't take what they'd seen, what had been done to them. Sometimes he wondered about joining them. Worryingly often actually. But what else was he supposed to do? Two years of wandering through a diseased version of his homeland and… what? What was he supposed to do? What _could _he do? He tried, he failed, and he would again. That was his way – to fail.

And if he could do something, what would happen after? Even with the Archdemon gone it would still be a country full of monsters. Murderers, thieves, arsonists, addicts, alcoholics, traitors, rapists – there was no end to the list. They had no king or queen and there was _definitely _nobody standing in line to give it a try. Were there any sort of noblemen still alive? They didn't understand how to survive. People with money _lived, _they didn't _survive. _It was the commoners who understood, the bullies, the ones who were thrown into jail in a civilised society, the ones who weren't afraid to do what needed to be done and damn the consequences.

People like him, apparently.

People like the slavers who held him. He clenched his fists. He'd been stupid, so, so _stupid. _He'd let his guard down for one moment and the next thing he knew he was tied to a horse being dragged along behind. He should have realised there was a mage. He was a bloody Templar. But it had been so long since he'd used his abilities that he hadn't even thought.

And the _walking. _They'd taken his armour, his sword and his boots, forcing him to walk over stone and bramble with bare feet. If he spoke, they caned him across the shoulders. If he raised his head, they caned him across the shoulders. If he made the wrong expression, they caned him across the shoulders. Maybe not the last one, but there were a couple of times when he hadn't done anything and they'd hit him anyway. All the way over hill and under hill at a gruelling pace he forced himself to keep up with lest they simply drag him the rest of the way, until finally they'd reached these caves. The moment he'd arrived, he'd seen a group of armoured, very angry-looking men exiting with a group of five people in tow, four elves and a human, each clad in irons.

It hadn't been exactly hard to work out who these people were when he'd seen a man, sporting an incredible resemblance to a rat, examining bags of food that must have just been dropped off. Sell people, keep fed. At least they weren't doing it for money.

His head banged against the cage, sending a dull ache through his head. Great, now he was complimenting slavers. Maybe he should just keep banging his head until his brain flopped out. It would make a satisfying squelch when it landed. Too bad he wouldn't be able to hear it.

To be honest though, he'd probably fail at killing himself too. Not particularly because he had anything worth living for, but because he knew, right at the heart of him, he couldn't die. If he did Ferelden was lost. And he hated it. He hated the knowledge that no matter what he would not let himself die. He hated the darkspawn, hated the people, hated the dying land. He hated the responsibility that was always shoved at him whether he wanted it or not.

Most of all, he hated himself.

Whatever calm or boredom he felt earlier was thoroughly eradicated. When he tried to shift position this time, he didn't bother staying quiet. Whenever he caused any kind of ruckus someone usually came running to give him a swift beating with a stick. But dammit he was pissed off, his back was in agony and if he was going to be sold like a piece of meat, he at least wanted to be comfortable when it happened.

His manoeuvring sent dull metallic echoes crawling into the nearby tunnel and caused the cage to swing nauseatingly. For once he was glad they didn't feed him often. Grunting with the effort, he pushed his hands down to the bottom of the cage and supported himself with them as he lifted his behind and forced his bare feet down the metal grating. He was lucky he was wearing nothing more than a thin pair of trousers and shirt. He was a well-built twenty-four-year old man with broad shoulders, close-cropped amber hair and intense brown eyes. More than one person had poked and prodded at him when he'd been dragged in, examining his muscles and scars. One had even checked his hair for lice. What they found was an astoundingly healthy man that could easily be sold for a high price. He guessed that was why they kept him apart. Didn't want him catching any nasty diseases. Or, Maker forbid, lice.

After several minutes of inching his body round, he finally got his feet to the bottom of the cage. He groaned in relief when he shoved them through the just-wide-enough holes and stretched his back properly for the first time in days.

"Maker, why didn't I do that before?" he mumbled. Again he wasn't answered. "Like you even would if you could."

With that done and no sign of anyone approaching his space, he was once left with the dilemma of what he was supposed to do with himself. Thinking about the past wasn't doing much for him. Thinking about his future was almost as depressing. Unfortunately that left him with his present situation.

The most obvious thing was that he needed to escape. Preferably without too much attention being brought to him. He needed to be careful. He wasn't exactly an ordinary man, and things had gone wrong for him before.

Relapse Indicators

1\. Raising an army: No.

2\. Trying to solve everyone else's problems: No.

3\. Staying as far away as possible from any form of people and/or darkspawn: Oops.

Two out of three wasn't bad.

Speaking of darkspawn, he'd actually completely forgotten about the ones he'd sensed earlier. They must have moved away at some point, only now they were coming back. Maybe they'd sensed him as well.

Stuck in a cage with darkspawn approaching. He'd been in worse situations. Once or twice on purpose. As long as he got out of this cage he would be fine. Which left the question of how to get out of this cage? He'd goaded his captors plenty of times but they only stayed silent, laughed or hit him. The only hope of him getting out of this cage was to be let out. There was no way he could pick the lock.

He really should have taken those lock picking lessons Leliana offered.

Stop thinking about them. Think you're way out.

How close were the darkspawn? Near the cave entrance if he was remembering where it was correctly. Which meant someone would see them very soon and the alarm would be raised. Hopefully they'd let him out then. More hands to fight, and he was clearly built for such a thing. From what he'd seen of his captors, they weren't. Why else would they hide in a huge cave? It wasn't like there'd be soldiers looking for them. Law and order was a thing of the past.

A yell from somewhere nearby. Panicked, basically a scream. He raised an eyebrow in response. Definitely not any good in fight. Signalling where you were before you even did anything was the first and stupidest mistake you could make.

He pulled himself up to press his face against the bars, as he could somehow telepathically tell the slavers to let him go. Hopefully they would. Either way it would be a vicious fight. It always was when darkspawn were involved. While he wasn't sure how many people were in here, he knew a lot of them would die. Sliced apart or torn to pieces or dragged away to be eaten or made into broodmothers. All that fun stuff.

And at the end of it all, he would still be standing, still breathing, tainted blood pumping around his veins and a sword never far from his reach. These men would die, but he would live.

He thought of a witch he once met in the Wilds, of how wary he'd been, how sure she would curse him or bewitch him or turn him into a frog and boil him. It was something he had laughed about in the day and silently brooded over at night. Now he wondered if he had been right to fear all along. Perhaps she _had _cursed him.

The darkspawn were drawing nearer, attracted to him as a moth was to light. Five genlocks, two hurlocks and a hurlock emissary, he thought. Sometimes he couldn't be sure, but sat in here with nothing to do, there was plenty of time to stop—breathe—make it so. Eight darkspawn. It's more than enough for these men. But not enough for me.

He would try to save them. It was the least he could after they'd beaten and imprisoned him. The looks on their face would be priceless.

If they survived.

Which they probably wouldn't.

But he would. He would find a way.

Alistair Theirin always did.

* * *

**AN**

Fun fact: this was actually supposed to be part of the first chapter but I had the part with Jace sitting on my computer for literally about a year and I wanted to get the ball rolling.

This will be a rather lengthy author's note but there are some things I want to address. First off, yes, this is basically a retelling of the fifth Blight and the events of DA:O. The plot for my story will obviously deviate since we're two years on from the game, and although it will touch back in for a few quests, it won't mindlessly follow the original events.

Second, I have only played the games. I haven't read any of the books and only have a vague knowledge of what happens in them so don't expect a completely canonical view of the dragon age world.

Third, I've already posted warnings in the prologue, but I'll say them again. This fic _will _contain: graphic descriptions of violence, gore, torture, as well as both F/M and M/M sex, brief descriptions of cannibalism, mentions of rape, a fair amount of swearing, and alcohol and substance abuse.

If you don't like any of these, then go read something else.

**Misc. Section **– basically a list of plot points, excuses and explanations:

I was originally going to hide Alistair's presence for a while but then I realised it would be unfair as this fic will be Alistair/M!Amell and I get some people might not be into that. So yeah. That's a thing.

Bree and Bird's Eye became a part of the story because I wanted to compensate for a companion who died in Denerim. Yes, there is a companion who will not be in this. Well, they will be in a sense, but while they have a vital role they will not be a main character. Characters from Awakening will also be appearing.

To save anyone from asking, Bird's Eye is _not _a mage. Jace, Bree and Wynne are. Bird's Eye is just a little special. And there is a reason.

I mentioned the story touches back in on a couple of quests, specifically the werewolves and the ashes of Andraste. In this, during the last grey warden's trip around Ferelden she didn't manage to acquire the dalish elves' help and Eamon wasn't sick. So Jace and co. will be doing that.

Jace _is _an elf, but he's also an Amell. Not Surana. Don't worry I've got it all worked out. I took some creative license because, hey, who doesn't want to be related to Hawke?

Finally, pairings: The two major ones will be, as I've said, Alistair/Jace, then Nate/Bree. Other people will touch butts, just not in a romantic sense.

Other than that, welcome to Dragon Age: What Remains.

Questions, comments, concerns?


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